Greetings From The Void

This is it. No more bullshit. Time to stop talking about it and write again.

Freelancing the odd music article is cool and all, but there’s more to this alchemical pursuit than what an editor decides deserves readers’ attention. I’ve got stories to tell, perspectives to give, and shit to talk.

More importantly, there are stories that need telling, other perspectives that need airing or refuting, and shit that needs talking. My message, and your media, have been without a home for far too long.

From The Void. The long-lost Lovecraft tale? A pretentious freshman creative writing project? The unofficial name for the final verse of Van der Graaf Generator’s “Pioneers Over C”? A bit of all three?

No idea. I’m making this up as I go along. I’ve always dreamed of starting a magazine called The Void. The idea was simple: There are many perceived voids in the world, and by staring too long into any one, you’ll realize it’s staring back at you. If there’s something to stare back, then is it really a void?

OK, maybe not so simple, but very necessary. There are bands you’ve never heard – and bands I’ve never heard – and our lives would be richer if we had. One of the greatest bands in the world, French prog pioneers Magma, recently played Portland after 50 years in existence. And all it got was one tiny write-up in The Mercury. That’s obscene.

There are films we’ve never watched, TV series we’ve never felt that we lived, books that have never changed our whole goddamn perspective on the universe. It’s not because we haven’t experienced them. It’s because we didn’t even know they existed or didn’t take the time to bust out of our construct bubbles and make it fucking happen.

After all, why try? Your streaming radio outlet of choice spoon-feeds your sonic wallpaper, and Netflix tells you what movies you’ll like. If you only watch mainstream news outlets, you probably think the only recent stories involve a mole on Kim Kardashian’s cleavage that looks like Kanye West. The real news is coming from unexpected, unpopular or unapproachable places. For every episode of “Last Week Tonight,” “Frontline” or “Vice” you watch, there are hundreds of stories impacting our world to which you’ll never be exposed.

That’s not to say that From The Void will solve the problems of pop journalism for you. What I hope to do fire a laser beam of pure, geeky, awkward love at the bands, books, films, and TV that have changed my life. Occasionally I might lob a frag grenade at the shit shows that continue to distract us from these islands of beauty in a sea of mediocrity. From The Void is about redirecting your eye to perceive shadows in the dark, about training your ears to perceive individual sounds among the din.

The Void is where I feel like I live, but I swear to you there is life here. I will bring it to you.